Queen Mary 2 made her maiden call to Beijing with our port stop at Xingang, but there were no crowds waiting or bands playing to welcome us like we had in Japan. Instead we were greeted by a huge modern cruise ship terminal building that looked like an airport, in the middle of nowhere!

Tianjin is the closest city of 9 million people and is China's 4th largest city, Xingang is Tianjin's modern port area built specifically for industry about one hour away, the whole area is under huge development with massive motorways, factories and high rise buildings but nothing for the tourist. The buildings were very uniform style, full of workers making stuff for Walmart and Asda, that's what we imagined! We never got to see much of the people but the villages looked in a poor state, our tour guide insisted the Chinese people were well cared for by their employers and had a good standard of living.

The tour buses came to collect us from the ship, a very swift operation and our tour guide joined us for our 3 hour journey to Beijing, the tour today was the "Great Wall, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and back to the ship by Chinese Bullet Train". It became obvious to us that although we were expected, the Chinese didn't want us to find our own way around and an organised tour was the way they could keep us under control! Our tour guide was very programmed in his commentary with his emphasis on the modern and future of China with very little mention of the past or history.

Beijing is a mad, busy city with a population of 16 million with grey polluted sky and our bus driver (make that rally driver) weaved in and out of the busy traffic to get us through to the Great Wall at the Juyongguan section. The whole wall stretches for 885 km but we only had one hour to explore. 30 minutes climbing up and 30 minutes climbing down and that was enough exercise for today, the wall was very steep and very high and none of the steps were the same size! The views were stunning from the top though and it was amazing to say that we had climbed one of the seven wonders of the world.

Our lunch stop was an organised meal above a huge factory shop, perfect for shopping until we realised how expensive the stuff was, we gave the shopping a miss, waiting until we get back to UK to buy our Chinese souvenirs there for a tenth of the price!

The Forbidden City was our next call, built in 1406 for the Ming and Qing dynasties and covers 250 acres with almost 1000 buildings, we walked from the south to north gates before being ushered back to our coach. We were not allowed to walk in Tiananmen Square because it was set up for a government event but we slowly crawled by, the huge traffic jam giving us the chance for our photographs. The square covers 34 acres, the largest city square in the world. At the square was the Chairman Mao Zedang Memorial Hall, the only place in China to hold the image of Chairman Mao on public display.

To return to our ship we joined the Chinese Bullet Train at the ultra modern Beijing station, built for the 2008 Olympic Games to show the world how advanced the Chinese nation is. The train travels at 394 km per hour and it took us 28 minutes to do the same 3 hour return journey back to Xingang.

There was nothing for us to do back at the port but we were so worn out after our long day that it wasn't long before we needed our sleep.

China is our call again on Wednesday, this time at Shanghai and all that modern China has to offer.